A non-government organisation (NGO) has urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to extend the closing date of census to ensure everyone is counted in the process and to avoid the consequences of previous census.
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) had announced closing the census on April 4 (today) but many areas have not been counted. PBS giving an open call/advertisement for identification of missed out areas will not be helpful, the district administration must be mobilised to ensure that all blocks are covered.
Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) Executive Director Peter Jacob on Monday hoped that the government would look into their requests for extending the date of census. “The date must be extended to review and ensure that the issues are addressed immediately and build trust in the process and the final results.”
Earlier, the CSJ through a letter, raised concerns with PBS regarding the ongoing census. CSJ observed that the ongoing process displayed a weak preparation, insufficient staff and training of field enumerators. The enumerators missed out questions about persons with disabilities, religious identity, mother tongue and transgender while also collecting the data on unauthorised paper forms. Which meant that data entries on the tablets could be assumptions, hence the output might fail to show the true picture of demography?
Then there are issues faced in geo-tagging, data entry and retrieval of Unique Token Number with regard to self-registration.
